Helen Clifford

The firm of Parker and Wakelin was the foremost silversmith in London for much of the eighteenth century, supplying royalty, aristocracy, and gentry with both domestic and ceremonial plate. This fascinating book draws on the firm’s records for this period to provide a remarkable account of patrons and their purchases and to investigate the social and economic structures on which the firm depended, revealing new information about the complex web of out-workers with specialist skills and raising questions of authorship. Beautifully illustrated, the book is both a social history of consumption in Georgian London and an investigation into the world of working men and women at that time.

Helen Clifford trained as an historian, completing a Ph.D. on the royal goldsmiths Garrard. She combines academic research, writing and lecturing with a hands-on approach to the decorative arts, running her own museum in Swaledale, North Yorkshire. She has curated major exhibitions including A Treasured Inheritance 600 Years of Oxford College Silver (2004) for the Ashmolean, and The Story of Britain and Gold (2012) for the Goldsmiths’ Company, where she is a freeman.